Keith Urban gives Birmingham fans a first-class performance

Keith Urban at the Oak
Mountain Amphitheatre Thursday night. Review gets four out of five stars.

Keith Urban ain't from around here.

In fact, his home country is about as far from Alabama as it gets. But when
the Australian native (who currently resides in Nashville) brought his Light
The Fuse Tour to Pelham's Oak Mountain Amphitheatre, the crowd welcomed him
like he was family.

The evening started out with spirited opening sets from
Dustin Lynch and Little Big Town (who are,
in fact, from around here; guitarist Jimi Westbrook is from Sumiton, Ala., and
singers Karen Fairchild and Kimberly Schlapman went to Samford University in
Homewood, Ala.).

Keith Urban arrived right at 9:00 with little fanfare; in
fact, the house lights didn't even dim. It was just Urban, his guitarists and
his bass player doing an instrumental jam before kicking off the set with "Long
Hot Summer."

Urban showed off plenty of energy from the get-go, but when
he started interacting with the crowd, the performance really began to shine.

"It sounds very, very loud and in good spirits," Urban said
early on after performing his hit "Stupid Boy." He proceeded to bring out a
large spotlight and shine it across the third tier, which was mostly full.

Then he spotted a few fans holding up a painted sheet.
"We flew a long way from Germany," the sheet read. So Urban responded in kind:
"Do you wanna come up and say hi?"

After the three German fans (one of which had the exact same
forearm tattoo as Urban, as he pointed out) left the stage, he brought up
another sign-holding fan: a 10-year-old Guatemalan girl named Kate.

"Guatemala?" Urban proclaimed. "What is going on here? Is
anybody here from Alabama?"

Kate's sign read, "Can I have my picture made with you for my 10th
birthday?" But Urban decided to do her one better: he led the
whole audience in a "Happy Birthday" sing-a-long that the young fan will never
forget.

Urban warmed a few hearts in that moment and proved that he truly
appreciates his fans. But he dedicated the next song, "Without You," to perhaps
his biggest fan.

"This song means a lot to me," he said. "But it means a
little bit more tonight, 'cause I got my wife sitting onstage here."

Yes, Nicole Kidman was in the house. She decided not to take up
any of her husband's spotlight, but fans near the front could spot her off to
the side of the stage, dancing and singing along.

Urban couldn't pull every fan onstage, of course. So halfway
through the set, he decided to give the fans in the third tier more than their
money's worth.

He and three of his bandmates wandered through the crowd,
shaking hands along the way, and made their way up to a small stage set up just
in front of the third tier. They stayed there for a solid fifteen minutes,
playing hits like "Once In A Lifetime" and "Better Life."

Once Urban and company made their way back to the main
stage, the energy dipped a bit for the final half-hour of the performance. But
it would've been hard to top everything that came before, and the fans didn't
complain after being treated to more hits like "You'll Think of Me," "Little
Bit of Everything" and "Somebody Like You."

After an explosion of confetti and a brief departure from
the stage, Urban returned for a two-song encore of "Tonight I Wanna Cry" and
"You Look Good In My Shirt" to cap a strong two-hour set.

During the better part of those two hours, Urban did just
about everything you could've asked him to.

He brought a few excited fans onstage with him and gave
third-tier fans a front-row seat. He brought out his opening acts for duets,
first Little Big Town for "You Gonna Fly" then Dustin Lynch for "Kiss A Girl."
He didn't rely on pyrotechnics or a fancy-stage set-up to entertain.

He even said "Roll Tide Roll" a total of three times.

So, yes, Keith Urban might be from the other side of the
planet. But he knew exactly what the Alabama crowd came to see, and he
delivered.